It would be useful and inspiring for our community to eventually adopt a “Cardano Bill of Rights” (CBR). The CBR would enshrine the core obligations and restrictions of the Cardano Platform, which would define the relationship between the decentralized Cardano Government and the members of the Cardano Community (defined as all ADA stakeholders worldwide).
Of course, I don’t like the idea of “big government” and that’s not what I’m proposing here, but when you think deeply about what Cardano represents, it’s fundamentally a system of economic and geopolitical governance built on top of an immutable transaction layer (CardanoSL) of value exchange. This means we should perceive the Cardano Platform as a bona fide system of economic and political governance just like any other national government (U.S. Government, U.K. Government, etc.)
HOWEVER, there is a huge and obvious difference between a “Cardano Governance Platform” and any other national government today: the Cardano Platform is designed to be nonpartisan and increasingly decentralized, which fundamentally prevents corrupt politicians and their corporate cronies from hijacking the treasury, money supply, economic policies and all other domestic and geopolitical policies within the decentralized Cardano Platform system.
As Cardano matures, the immutable integrity of CardanoSL combined with the computational reliability of CardanoCL, plus the elegant simplicity and flexibility of IELE (eliminating human fallibility and democratizing and systematizing all contracts and the social contract between citizens) . . . will result in a gradual and inevitable shift away from the highly subjective and flawed political systems that are destroying our world today toward a trust-less political system based on the Cardano Platform.
In this context, a Cardano Bill of Rights becomes virtually a necessity. This is especially true if we want 7-11 billion humans on Earth over the next generation and beyond to trust and embrace the Cardano Platform as the ideal decentralized economic and geopolitical governance system for humanity’s future. Only then will humanity have a chance to achieve truly global peace and prosperity.
Bravo @ADALove well put
Now we only have to find someones to write it.
One point for consideration in governing 10B distributed 7/11 going people -
As you said, all social contracts will become systematized, automated and optimized (hopefully socially). Stakepools will break down into local syndicates and global communities. And who better to manage the interactions of these groups than an AI?
The ultimate trustless, objective management of governance (really the computer will only have to publish the “established market prices” or something to that effect). But through machine learning techniques it could probably do a lot more…
What do you think?
Many years ago I worked on several AI-based projects (primarily in machine vision / image recognition for security applications) and I’ve published some things about AI that have required me to think pretty deeply about AI’s role in human societies. Based on those experiences, I don’t have a very positive perspective on AI because I know what many governments and corporations today are doing to exploit the power of AI to manipulate and control human civilization. And the probability of AI going rogue and/or doing unintended things that hurt humanity in various ways is very high.
So, when I see/hear people wax poetic about AI (I’m not saying you are.), it’s difficult for me to join the happy party. Fortunately, in the context of Cardano, AI is not required to accomplish any of Cardano’s goals. There are some areas of the Cardano system that can be enhanced by AI, but overall, CardanoCL-based smart contracts (the heart and soul of all human activities in future Cardano ecosystems) are highly structured and rules-based.
As a result, we (humanity) can achieve any required level of democratic and economic governance sophistication simply with a hierarchical system of rules, which does not require any machine learning or AI whatsoever. That’s actually a good thing because it means that the implementation of Cardano is not dependent upon the unpredictable development curve of an AI-based system. In fact, this is one of the reasons that Charles/team can create such specific roadmaps and generally accomplish their milestones with relatively high accuracy.
The most significant place that I see for AI in Cardano Land is in the area of adversary defense, particularly when quantum computing starts to be deployed as a powerful offensive weapon against networked systems like Cardano. Then, it will be important to have AI-based systems that can learn and respond as quickly as possible to defend against many forms of quantum computing attacks. But until then, IMHO, Cardano doesn’t need any AI.
Regarding your comment about who should write the Cardano Bill of Rights, I suspect it will write itself over time. If enough people see this thread and contribute, we should develop a pretty good sense for which principles and values our community believes are truly important enough to enshrine as “human rights” in Cardano Land. Then, when the time comes, the community can have a vote on which of those values/principles should be codified in a formal document.
I am working my way through this June 8 2017 interview Charles did https://youtu.be/dMNhOIUcOYo?t=1h10m43s and at the 1.10 mark Charles start talking about individual rights in a crypto currency and and in crypto market places. I thought his ideas might fit into this discussion. He lists Privacy , people ought not to know you own cryptocurrency, immutability , can’t change history, and free flow of value , no capital controls and ability to transact across jurisdictions as individual rights or principles. Also the individual has the right to know the rules before entering a market place, and can agree to give up some rights to enter that place.
I’m not sure if these rights are pertinent to a Community Bill of Rights but might help in sorting the right to the proper entity. I also think that the above addresses some peoples’ concerns of how much force or access the banking system and governments are going to have over the platform. After watching most of Charles’ interviews it seems his philosophy is what he describes above. The banking system or whatever will exist on the fringe of the system partitioned from the rest. If you wish to enter the “banking marketplace” you agree to giving up certain rights to enter there, like KYC for instance. But if you do not choose to give up your rights and do not enter the “banking marketplace” cannot access the rest of the Cardano system and you remain private and unknown. Hope this is useful here and some food for thought.
I think there are some people with a quasi-religious idea of what that means, but to me it’s merely a description. So you can write up the principles of the community or even the rules and have the stakeholders vote, but to be enforced, it must turn into code.
Now, what is the difference between a “bill of rights” in code form, and the currently existing law / regulations?
To me, the most important difference is that law in Cardano can be implemented with 51% stake. Or maybe it could be more, or less. Whereas the Bill of Rights has to have a different implementation mechanism, require more % stakers to change, or maybe even be hard coded to the point that it requires a hard fork to change.
Ultimately, the sustainability of an institution depends on people, although the rules of the game can certainly help as you describe in your post. So I think that we need to first try to expand the ecosystem to the point that it is immune to attack from the outside. If Cardano is only 1% of the market then it is much easier for a large player to manipulate the rules, than if it is 10% or 50%. But if Cardano is too big, then the ability to leave for alternatives is reduced, which is also bad.
Ultimately, Ada will be accumulated in the hands of token / dApp creators, who are users of the system and have an incentive to keep it healthy. Even if they are not super-rich, they will control the stake for voting purposes. Is there anything we can do to make that dynamic more secure?
Good thoughts, @regsanman. Your comments are consistent with my interpretation of Charles’ interview, too.
I appreciate that Cardano will give us the power to choose because that’s the power that humanity is rapidly losing as we approach the coming convergence between AI+IoT+ubiquitous surveillance+micro-drones+state/corporate collusion.
It should definitely require more than a simple majority just like most national constitutional amendments require 2/3 to 3/5 majorities.
The hard fork option exists regardless of whether we codify that option into our governance processes, but I suppose we could still define the specific conditions that trigger a hard fork. That would be the equivalent of a state (TX, CA, NY, etc.) seceding from the Union. So, we would need to create a high threshold for that to be legitimately allowed while still retaining true interoperability with the new entity. This threshold would eliminate the incentives for malefactors and profiteers to tear our community apart for some self-serving purpose.
I appreciate your primary point here. It’s also interesting to ponder that in the near-future DAOs and many forms of AI (long before the Singularity) will be interacting among themselves without any human intervention at all. This is more than a theoretical point: Fully autonomous systems are at the core of all smart contracts, which is the foundation of Cardano’s entire governance system that we are discussing here. (But that’s a topic for a more expansive discussion. I’ll focus on your other points.)
Agreed. I think this is fundamentally the single-most significant factor that determines how resilient the platform is at every phase of its evolution.
Interesting point. I rarely think about this issue because of the interoperability that is being built into Cardano’s core architecture. That gives me confidence that we can migrate to other platforms in the future if necessary, but your point is still interesting.
If you mean securing the loyalty of developers to the Cardano platform so they don’t have any significant incentives to undermine it, then it seems the best way to do that is to make sure we all trust the integrity of the trust-less architecture of the system. And it seems like the best way to accomplish that is to operate exactly the way the team and community have been operating so far: Transparent roadmaps, frequent updates, increasing decentralization, responsiveness to the community, clearly defined incentives that are aligned with the good health of the ecosystem, etc.
well put
So, we would need to create a high threshold for that to be legitimately allowed while still retaining true interoperability with the new entity. This threshold would eliminate the incentives for malefactors and profiteers to tear our community apart for some self-serving purpose.